Birmingham Council Offices

Ex-Or - making light work at flagship council offices

Lighting management from Ex-Or has helped Birmingham City Council make the claim that its new £38 million flagship office development is the UK’s most environmentally friendly council property ever built.

10 Woodcock Street in Aston comprises 22,000 sq m of accommodation on five floors and will accommodate more than 3,000 council workers when it becomes fully occupied later in the year.

Ex-Or's MLS Digital Managed Lighting System was installed throughout the building to control the 4,000 light fittings situated in open plan office areas, corridors, meeting rooms, washrooms and lobby areas.

The Ex-Or MLS Digital Managed Lighting System provides fully integrated lighting management which uses communicating presence detectors that share information on occupancy patterns throughout the building. This means it automatically provides optimum lighting conditions - delivering light only when it is required, ensuring no energy is wasted.

Rows of work stations within the open plan areas are controlled by the MLS. In addition, intelligent daylight sensors in work areas close to perimeter glazing and the four internal atria ensure maximum benefit is derived from natural lighting.

Increasingly, large organisations such as local authorities are turning to lighting control to eliminate the unnecessary use of lighting in their buildings. This helps them meet their environmental commitments under schemes such as the CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method). The extensive use of lighting management, and the incorporation of a number of sustainable solutions within the building, mean 10 Woodcock Street is on target to achieve an “Excellent” BREEAM rating.

Birmingham City Council wanted to achieve a modern 21st century enhanced working environment for its employees, whilst making substantial savings in energy use. As well as delivering significant energy savings, the MLS Digital Managed Lighting System plays its part in providing an optimum lit environment in which occupants can work with maximum productivity.

Luminaire UK supplied the specially designed light fittings to EMCOR and commissioned Ex-Or to provide lighting control using the MLS Digital Managed Lighting System.

Ian Bury, managing director of Luminaire UK, the leading designers and manufacturers of commercial, retail and industrial luminaires, said: “Birmingham City Council wanted to incorporate cutting edge sustainable building techniques and technologies into the new building. Lighting control from Ex-Or is making a significant contribution to the Council’s aims of both achieving substantial cuts in energy use and meeting its environmental obligations.

“We have incorporated Ex-Or lighting management into other projects so we were confident Ex-Or would deliver significant savings and prove totally reliable in operation.”

The completed building houses a range of best practice sustainable features including combined heating and power supply, passive ventilation, rainwater harvesting, and photo-voltaic panels to generate electricity. It even has a “brown roof”, a rooftop garden designed to attract local wildlife and to provide additional building insulation against heat loss.

The new building has been developed as part of the Working for the Future programme and will ensure the council delivers more than £100 million of savings over the next 25 years.